Wednesday, May 18, 2022

AIR day 10 (sunspots)

The following is a blog post from the Astronomer-In-Residence (AIR) web site, reproduced here. Text and images used with permission.

Day 10 blog entry.

Wednesday 18 May 2022: Our Amazing Sun

We ran our solar observing drop-in session today. Lots of visitors, young and old. Lots of great questions.

We used the Meade 10-inch SCT in the Waasa Debaabing observatory with a Kendrick full-spectrum white light visual solar filter. Great view of the Sun.

sunspots

Captured with a Canon 40D at 11:04 AM, ISO 100, 1/500th of a second. The large group at the top is the Active Region 3014. The two smaller spots below is AR 3015. Bottom-right is AR 3010 and finally bottom-south is region 3016.

Out of frame I saw Active Region 3007.

Busy place. Hopefully we’re get some aurora soon…

Two young lads helped do some safe solar projection with some old (small) binoculars. Science!

Why can I never remember how long it takes the Sun to rotate?!

It’s around 27 days.

My favourite question was: Why is the Sun not yellow?

The Astronomer-In-Residence program is coordinated by the Allan I Carswell Observatory (AICO) at York University with the Killarney Provincial Park Observatory (KPPO).

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